We have been taught, very much programmed, to think on the run, to be rushed and hurried, to anticipate and to expect… and somehow, to stress out.

Then there are the methods people have come up with to reduce the stress that we seem to expect from daily life. There are spiritual practices, which for Buddhists are part of daily life, and there are drugs, and there is yoga, and there are massages, and there are exercises, and there are those who say “tune it out and just get on with things”.

What else is there? Answer the question: What causes “stress” in the first place for many people? Stress seems to be the result of what happens when expectations do not measure up with results; then our minds spend hours analyzing, thinking, chewing on what went wrong (more often than what went right), and losing sleep and losing our appetites because we expected or anticipated one result and another one showed up.

What can we do then that might reduce our dependence on short -term coping methods such as drugs by the expensive dose –load, or massages that temporarily flush our bodies of pain and suffering and lactic acid?

We can learn to take life naturally, and not place such a high, “set in stone” priority on expecting or anticipating. For daily life can be seen rather as a baseball game.

In baseball, every at bat is different, every inning and every game will be different. Your team can play the same team three days in a row and the results will be attained in different ways. You might have the same line –ups, but the pitchers will not be the same and the weather conditions will not be the same. The ball will carry differently depending on the winds; the turf will be different, the plays will be fielded differently.

The managers can “expect” a play to go a certain way but what if it does not? What happens then – stress. The pitcher wanted a strike called but the umpire called the pitch a ball; so much for the strikeout. A batter wants to launch a home run but instead gets under the ball and hits a long out. Well, the hit might advance a runner or it might be the third out of the inning.

As is baseball, so is life. We might go to the same bus stop we do each weekday for our trip in to the shop. We might get there about the same time each day but the bus might be late by a few minutes due to construction, a fire, or a crash that causes a reroute. When we get to work we might expect some colleague to show up but perhaps they do not, so part of the day’s plan might not be done, or lunches might be cut short because the staff has fewer people.

Some people say it is not good to lower expectations, but considering the effects stress has on the body, not setting so much on expecting something might be the best thing we can do save for treat ourselves when we have done something good at the office or had a very successful week or done some kind of community service. It is useless to anticipate what will happen; anticipation is the companion of worry, and worry does no good.

We can also learn to “mind less”. When we mind too much, we continue thinking about every little thing that happens, every person that comes and goes, every gesture, everything, and getting the small stuff too much in our minds causes just as much worry as anticipation and expectation. We can indeed have “too much on our minds”. In this age of too much information, we have to learn to do more than merely “tune out” what is not relevant or important. We have to change our thinking on not only how much information we need and is necessary, but on those who say we need to pay so much attention to the information provided. Thank goodness for the mute button and the OFF switch.

Each day presents opportunities to be fresh and new regarding what will happen. You have heard the idea of “open mind”; that is basically another way of saying “Be natural”. Let things happen as they will; if the bus comes a couple minutes late, it comes a couple minutes late. If someone does not show up on time or at all, arrange lunches with the staff members that show up. It is polite, if you happen to be late because of a transit situation, to tell someone why you were late or what happened, and get to your position as soon as possible so the day can carry on.

Do not let your job run you; YOU control your work and your interactions with customers. You say who is next and attend to the person you are assisting. Patience on all sides is a virtue, but you have the hand when in a sales situation. You might expect something to happen but if it does not, that energy is wasted in the anticipation of selling something, seeing someone, hearing something or experiencing something. Here is where the idea of the open mind is useful. Once you are at the workplace, ascertain things when you arrive. Do not anticipate ANYTHING; plans can change on a moment’s notice and situations can pop up.

There could be a storm, a building evacuation, a car crashing into the building, a fire or a swarm of bees that lands on the bridge near where you work. The boss could be in a great mood or he could be in a foul mood. The vice –president could be ready with her plan or she might put it off because there has been an event in her family that requires her attention away from the company. Though you cannot anticipate happenings such as those above or know what to do in such cases until someone else informs you, there can be some kind of “Plan B” at the firm for when someone cannot follow through with what is supposed to be on the day’s agenda.

You can find something else to do- there is always work to be done at many businesses. You can find ways to be helpful or find something to learn. Or if things just aren’t going to go as the day’s schedule mandated, you might just go back home. Who knows? If that swarm of bees hangs around you might just have to “telecommute”!

Anticipation, expectation, and worry are three little demons that afflict many people around the world and are major sources of “stress”. But each day brings chances to start with a clean slate, to meet the day free of thoughts of “what might happen”. Each day brings the bridges, but you will not know how to cross the bridges till you come to them.

You come up to the bridge and look at the situation. What is going on? Is the bridge intact and thus can be walked across with ease on sturdy supports? Is there a flood that has washed out the bridge so that it cannot be passed? What are the conditions? You cannot know until you see the situation and find out how then to deal with it.

Jobs, the economy, commerce, retail, the financial market, the service sector; all of these can be used to describe some aspect of our occupation with what we know as “work”. Of course doing work is just a matter of putting out effort for a purpose, a cause, the meeting of a goal. Work is the keelson of our nation, our real wealth in the matter of focusing action and the brain on disciplined activity in order to accomplish anything at all.

Now it is nothing the matter with someone coming from another country and wanting to work, to do something that Americans supposedly do not want to do. Our nation is built on foreign blood and on cultures and traditions and manners from all over the world. Still, there are American citizens, truly legitimately -born people within these borders who deserve every chance to get any kind of work before someone who is not a legal citizen has the chance to get the privileges that apply to honest to goodness American citizens.

As a word of caution and for the safety of women who are engaging in some risky behavior, beware of signs of “birthing houses” such as those recently discovered in California. There women come and they are paying thousands of dollars to have their babies in the United States. This presents health hazards for the mothers and the babies. SUppose something happened in transit from Asia or wherever the women are coming from. Can there be reliable help if something does go wrong? What if labor begins early, what if the baby has trouble, what if the mother has some kind of condition develop that required qualified medical help? Will it be there for them? And when they get to the birthing house, will there be qualified help for them if complications arise? Everyone who suspects there is a birthing house in their area should contact health departments and the law so that the place can be shut down, the women given proper help, and the need for birthing houses and those who run those schemes stopped immediately.

What do these women think that such a thing will do for family life? They might have their babies here but what about possible deportation and other problems? Some kind of family life that would be for those kids. They want to be citizens- come here and do it legitimately, and quit saddling true -born Americans with your problems, taxes, money issues, health and education issues and other situations. Not happy here- well go back where you came. Want to be happy here- get legitimate citizenship and do your part like every good American citizen is supposed to do. You might not be lazy; you might be industrious and willing to work, but don’t demand your “rights”. Like we do, you have to EARN what you get if you care at all about duty and responsibility. What sort of example do you think that just sitting around and demanding what you want will set for your kids?

Americans are not lazy… well, some might be, but then laziness has various and sundry causes and reasons and the like. But there should be no work that is “below” us to do. People for centuries have done “manual” labor, toiling, tilling, sewing, knitting, hewing, chopping, mixing, boiling, walking the borders, trudging the frontiers, making maps, painting and drawing for a building plan. We would not be a nation if everyone was some lazy bum; there are people who do honest, hard work every day and who are proud of that fact.

Firefighters and first responders do their work diligently; in Chicago there have been enough incidents in the past few years to make that clear. Transportation -related people do their work in so many ways: drivers educators, bus drivers, airline pilots, ship captains, makers of the implements these people use daily, such as tower ladders, airplanes, busses, trucks, ocean liners, freighters, semis, train cars and cranes. Construction workers start and finish homes, offices, apartments, condominiums, warehouses, airport runways, fire stations and police stations. We certainly have no lack of hard workers, dedicated people who clock in and out every day and have the goal in mind. From the ground up these folks are on the front lines of commerce and industry.

What is it then that Americans do not want to do, and why would we not want to do them? No job can be considered unimportant so long as there is a niche for it, a need for it, or an obviously visible sign that “something needs to be done”. Do we have reasons for not wanting to go into the farms and fields and pick fruits and vegetables? We eat them after all, so why not contribute to going out and getting them, preparing them for the table, and serving them? Do more than just consume, in other words; make an effort to the whole picture.

If we do not want to be domestics in a household, why would we not want to be? Those with certain lifestyles might require the assistance of capable men and women to make their household run efficiently, especially if they travel a lot, have young children but also have very busy business schedules, or have a large home that needs maintenance. It takes the right kind of person to be a “domestic interior maintenance engineer”. Not everyone can be a nanny, a maid or butler or chauffeur or gardener or good cook for a big household or one with heavy business or travel responsibilities. Caring for others is special; care giving is a big industry and should be supported.

Where does that leave those who beg on the streets for money and carry signs saying they will “work for food”? Laziness is it, or something else? Are they disabled, otherwise challenged, debilitated, or is it really laziness? Some of the guys I see around look perfectly capable of picking up tools and cleaning a park, a vacant lot, or a public pool. But do they find it easier to stand or sit on the streets and shake cups of coins? What do they with the money they get? Well if they are really hungry offer to buy them food; if they are not, forget about it and give your charity to someone who really wants it and will accept it gratefully.

Now if you are in a position to give people jobs, you can offer some of these people work. Talk to them respectfully, buy them a meal, offer them work and describe the terms. Sit down with them and listen to them and what they need. All they might need to cease their begging is someone to listen and to help them over a tough obstacle such as losing a job, a home, or a means of transportation. Listening is such a great tool for networking, and we can all slow down and listen to someone’s story.

What are you willing to do to make this nation better? Are you going to pick up a broom and dustpan, a rake, shovel, pickaxe, trash bags, gloves, a blower, a trowel, a hoe, something to plant a rosebush with? How will you make your community a better place to live and work and play?

When you have an obsession with someone or something, it is basically an imbalance; one of thought, deed, word, action, influence, attentions on that object to the sacrifice of other and more important things, such as job tasks or house tasks.

When that happens it is time to get counseling, to talk with others, and the boss if you are fortunate to do so, if the obsessive object is where you work. Having a chat with people you trust can be as the opening of a book; once you are on the right page, that with the information you seek, you know it.

Today I went through exactly that process. The past couple of days, I sensed something was out of balance, something in physical exercise yes, something in the fleshly appetites, yes, but there were other things that muddled my brain processes, that addled and clouded my thoughts, that deeply upset my sleep, my views of work, of just about everything that I considered as vital and wonderful. In short there were signs of depression, of a mental recession of the caliber I have not been caught up in since I moved to Chicago. The first winter I was here and went through a bout of SAD, I had to battle my way through it pretty much solo, as at that time I knew very few people here who could be called upon for counseling or dealing with “the holidays” in a way that I figured would be satisfied.

I got through that few weeks by singing the hit tune “Route 66” until I was tired of it, but that did the job. I completed the seasonal job and went on to other things…and I am still in Chicago and enjoying all this great city has to offer. I am in a totally different environment now, a place I like, and I enjoy the people I work with.

The problem many people face when at the workplace is that they, well, like someone they work with a little too much, to the point of doubting, fears, worries, concerns and other mental issues that are so deep and heavy that they begin to do the worst possible thing. These ramblings of the mind and pullings at the heart start to interfere with workplace performance. In short they interfere with productivity. And if you are a worker committed to doing the best job you can, doing that which you are assigned and endeavoring to do whatever you can to make the business successful, that can be a real shocker when the truth comes out.

Obsessions are bad for workplace production, in short. You can get so hooked on a person or a task or an idea that you get on one track and lose sight of other things you can and indeed should be doing. Recently I was pretty nearly to being prodded into finding something to do because my mind stuck in a rut dealing with someone I like. Once I got to working at the different task I felt better and yes, I felt productive. There is something else, though, when one’s Christian principles are considered in such a light; obsessions are idolatrous and filled with vices and troubles, adversities and problems. Focusing too much on people or things is against what I learned as a good ideal for being a Christian.

In the Book of Judges, when the children of Israel made or followed or served images and false gods, nothing but trouble awaited them. Their rulers did evil in the sight of the LORD, they did not do right by God who had brought them out of so much trouble and fear, and they… well, they slacked on the job is what. Their work was to follow the word of the LORD, the tenets and principles given them decades and generations before when they were delivered with generous spoils from the slaving hands of the Egyptians. Those later generations did not follow rightly in the sight of the LORD, and they were called on the carpet for it. They were beset with war, death, pestilence, harshness, slavery and burned cities. They paid dearly for slacking on the job… for not serving properly the LORD who called to them, protected them and provided for them.

In this time when production is talked of as going down in some ways and going up in other ways, what turns out to be the most important way? Production of material goods happens all the time; production of a good character takes a lot longer than making a new car to sell. Building a good character takes years, decades, patience… practice constantly. It is not just going to worship and hearing a sermon and expecting to know everything and live by what the leader says straight out. You must think that being productive is what you are there at the workplace to do, or at anywhere that you have made a commitment to do something. The Israelites suffered because they slacked on the job; and I know what it means to suffer on account of slacking.

My good character principles went by the wayside because my energies were not properly focused. It is something, quite amazing really, what a poor or troubled conscience does to one’s entire being. When the causes are found out and all that ties in with those causes, be those things subtle or overt, it is then that solutions can be found – in this case to slacking on the job, or poor productivity. The obsession can be quelled, the concerns conquered, by looking at the field from fresh viewpoints.

You can always find something to do on the job. No place is too neat or organized or free of dust that something cannot be done to make it look even better. Small businesses are chock full of things to do to make the place better. Clean a window, rearrange a display case, do a window display, dust or mop or sweep. Check the mail, go pick up a shipment, or rework a clothes rack. Polish a mirror, straighten a crooked picture or call a customer to check on an order, whether or not they have received it or are satisfied with it. The fact is take after a good little phrase my grandmother uses when it seems nothing is around to do, and that is simply “do something, do something”! Or you can figure out just by looking around that, as my father says, “There is always room for improvement.”

If you are not sure that there is something you can do, ask your manager or boss if there is something they are thinking about and might need help with. There might be a task that someone else cannot do but that, after all, you can do. After all, brilliant diamonds do not mine themselves; they do not cut and polish themselves or set themselves in beautiful rings on their own. Someone has to take that diamond in the rough and turn it into something that will be wonderful and sparkling, will throw off spikes of color and brilliance and perhaps grace someone’s finger on a wedding day, or grace a gift for an anniversary. We are all of us diamonds in the rough… and we all need a little help getting trim and polished and set in the right place sometimes. There is no harm in asking for help – the stupid question is the one you do not ask. The right question is the one you do ask.

Listening to the news this morning, sounding all blase’ and secular and people-touting, I shook my head at such phrases similar to, “We’re trying to burn off this fog.” “We’re burning off this fog.” Well now, it is high time the media folks started putting such talk aside and out and over for good.

Thunderstorm (Photo credit: m.prinke)

Might as well come to terms with it, media people. We might blame the weather for this or that, but a lot of what goes on is natural and not of our doing or anything we can control. Talk of global warming aside, Earth has seen many cycles of warming and freezing, spurts of human activity and changes in where industrialization and collections of people happen through the centuries. Our position in the Milky Way galaxy changes as well, so there are varying amounts of dust and light and gas that are factors too.

Certainly we do not “burn off the fog”, “drive the snow out”, or “get rid of the rain” any more than we cause the sun to move or the Earth to rotate. Think we can bring the rain?

Coooooooooooooooooooooooooooo-rection!

The Sun, a middle-aged yellow star which is over 100 Earths wide, provides the heat engine to drive the weather. Water vapor, winds, dust in the atmosphere, and air pressure affect that which we have come to know as weather. It happens every day and can be described in dozens if not hundreds of ways. We have sunny days, hot days, drought; we have floods, tornadoes, dust storms and bow-echo thunderstorms that can spread damage over wide swaths of the nation. We study the weather but we cannot bid it to come or go.

We can certainly do our best to take precautions regarding the weather or other natural occurrences. Citizens and officials can try to work together to make living areas safer against floods, fires, tornadoes and winds. We can be careful of where we build, we can control the brush around our homes and keep our parks cleaner, and we can work with those in the sciences to develop materials and building techniques that will at least make an attempt at keeping buildings safer against severe storms.

In Nashville one year I was home in my circa-1917 bungalow, sturdy with a stone foundation and first floor walls, with the storm door tightly shut and bolted, when a severe storm blew in, and wow did it ever blow through! 90 to 100 mile an hour winds whistled through and made that eerie noise one might hear in a hurricane; after all, those are hurricane -force winds. Lightning scorched the skies east of the city for a long time after that.

Now lightning is one of those unpredicatables- who knows where it will strike; though when it does it is about 40,000 degrees and bolts can be an inch wide (maybe they can be more than that?). Who among us knows how big or small hailstones will be until we see and measure them? You can tell there is hail in a storm by the odd greenish-gray coloration seen in the clouds when the storms are coming. A hail -producing storm from the distance has a line of green under the cloud. I noted that phenomena once north of Nashville. Sure enough, as the weather report talked about the storm there was a thin line of greenish-gray under that cloud miles away!

So you weather people can “try as hard as we can to burn off that dense fog” or “get rid of the rain and let the sun come out” but wouldn’t it be best just to stick to plain talk and give the weather forecast and conditions as you see them and let go the small talk? Put aside the “we are trying hard to get rid of the fog” bit and just be plain and logical in your talks- no blame, none of the human factor, just the facts straight up and tell people what the conditions are. Make the scientific part of it fun and challenging too, for people who want to know the meteorology facts and stats, rather as the forecasters on WGN in Chicago do.

Weather can be fun and challenging to study, as anything natural or in the universe can be, with the remembrance that we did not create it and all in all we do not influence it. Nature is ours to enjoy and take care of to the best of our abilities.

What can you do to keep your environment clean, fresh, enjoyable and wonderful? As you study it, think about it.

Every August and into September you hear it, that old worn out, trite phrase “back to school“. And what do you hear in the same paragraph? Retailers are hoping for… or some other commercial, financial, or corporate talk. Geez whizz already… a little off the main course, aren’t we? (And I am not talking about a big banquet, either.)

It reminds me of the advertising and talking up people do for weddings. In the bridal magazines are advertisements for gowns costing thousands of dollars, for honeymoon vacations, for limousine rentals, for rings and shoes, for the bridal party, for photographers, for reception favors and for gigantic cakes.

One might forget that the purpose of the wedding is a ceremony uniting two people, for the start of life together, for what those who attend can hope will be bliss, happiness and a good family life for the couple. Just as this goes to the retail pot every time someone talks of getting married, so this gibberish about back to school has become blown way out of proportion.

I mean, whose business is it anyway if some parents dress their kids in outfits costing hundreds of dollars, as a local news bit had on the radio today (so what, spend what you want on the kids and buy where you please- no one has to know). Whose business is it where you buy the school supplies– from the local small business drugstore or from Walgreens.

Back to school should be about one thing- getting an education and preparing to be a good citizen of this great nation. It is not uniforms, clothes, shoes, the latest gadgets, computers, cliques (or how to avoid being caught up in one), sneakers, jewelry, hair styles or anything of the kind. These kinds of things are about as meaningless as the junk on the census forms, the demographic junk that inhibits national progress. Back to school should be about getting to the bus stop safely, behaving in school, paying attention in class, and learning what you are there to learn. School is not about what you are wearing or what part of town you come from- that is no one’s business but your own, and keep it that way.

There are the basics of course- the reading, writing, spelling, geography, history, social studies, civics, language arts and such. There are the niceties such as dance, music, band, shop, sports, and cheerleading, if one is so inclined to engage in these activities. You can learn the computer, you can learn the cello; you can learn auto mechanics, or you can learn physics.

It is vital that parents or guardians tell the students about avoiding bullies, about not being a bully, about sticking to one’s own business, about proper behavior and about staying out of trouble. Give incentives for being good, and emphasize the purpose of school and doing one’s best in academics, in sports, in whatever the student engages for achieveing a well-rounded education. After all, the roots of education prepare the student to grow strong stems (STEM, of course), in the future.

EDUCATION: From the root words meaning TO DRAW OUT, MARCH OUT, or LEAD OUT. That is what happens- in school one’s talents are drawn out and polished and used with wisdom and knowledge; the student is thus prepared, on graduation day, to march out to destiny with their class, perhaps as valedictorian. They will not only lead out the others but then will be come leaders and begin the cycle anew- drawing out the talents and gifts of others and leading them to do their best too.

Begin your students on a lifelong love of learning, literally a path to a good life and being a good citizen. LEARN comes from the root -leisa, which stems from words meaning bed, garden bed, track, furrow or path. Learning is creating a map of skills, talents, and knowledge you gain and put together for use in any situation, any kind of plan or for accomplishing any goal throughout life. Is it all “academic”? You better believe it is!

A love of learning plants strong roots and builts strong stems. The school campus is merely a ground for those roots and stems to be planted and to bloom and to be fertilized and grow. The learning experience takes place outside the campus too, and in the world away from those classrooms and the gym and the lunchroom is where many of the best learning experiences take place. Live it, love it, learn it and keep on “educating” yourself and others.